


You Dress for the Weather You Want, Not the Weather You Deserve

by yonnna



Category: Transistor (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Pining, Pre-Series, also featuring, an alternative title would be, sybil complains about the weather and also how gay she is, wlw/mlm solidarity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 23:20:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11701959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonnna/pseuds/yonnna
Summary: Sybil doesn't care for the clouds most days.





	You Dress for the Weather You Want, Not the Weather You Deserve

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I thought "Sybil complaining about the weather" was an adequate fic premise, but I wrote... something. And now it exists.

 

“Rain or snow?” asked Sybil, rubbing her fingers together — turning blue, the way her lips were turning white, pale with cold, the way her face was turning pink, rouged with warmth — looking at Red under the low rim of her hat as though she was the sunset which the clouds had robbed them. It was night now, she supposed, and still gray through the high-set window of the opposite wall. “I’m taking a count.”

“Of who prefers what?”

“Of who I can blame for my frostbite.”

Red did not turn, caught her reflection frowning in the mirror, and laughed without parting her lips.

“I’m serious, you know,” Sybil said. She pulled her legs up onto the sofa and brushed a layer of frost from her skirt, unfurling the fabric so that it covered the worst of her exposed skin. “We could have sunshine every day of our lives,” — she sighed here, drawn out as she set her head back against the cushion — “And they chose _winter_.”

“The choice was rain or snow,” Red reminded her, standing. She plucked up the coat draped across the back of her chair. “And you chose a sundress.”

“You dress for the weather you _want_ , darling.” She raised one shoulder into a lazy shrug, and Red dropped the coat in her lap.

“I’ll be sure to remember that.”

It was not hers. Sybil could tell by looking — the fabric was dark and heavy, and it was too big to fit on her without hanging loose at her arms. It was not _hers_ , and she took no comfort from it; none of the warmth seemed to reach her when she draped it over her shoulders, but Red smiled, content, so she pulled it tight around her and tried to be content, too. Tried to feel warmer. Goodness, she _tried_.

There was a knock at the door, and at Red’s call it cracked open part of the way. From where she sat, he was one shoulder, bare white sleeve, and half a shadowy face; from where Red stood, he might have been the daylight, the way she glowed to face him. If he was, none of _that_ warmth reached Sybil, either.

“Almost ready?” he asked.

“Almost,” she answered. “I hope you don’t mind. I lent your coat away.”

— She almost shuddered under it.

“Poor Sybil’s freezing to death.”

— But it was not the cold prickling her skin now.

“That so? How about I get you both a warm drink?” He might have smiled then. _Her_ face softened as though he did, and Sybil felt her jaw tighten. “To make up for it.”

“Make it as sweet as you are, dear,” Sybil chimed in. He chuckled. She thought, distantly, less than sweetly, that he might scald himself on hot coffee, and felt her chill fade for a moment.

Red moved close to speak some hushed farewell, which Sybil might have overheard with ease — but she did not want to be a fly on the wall in this conversation. She did not want this conversation to _be_ at all. The door clicked shut and she shed the coat from her shoulders, letting her boiling blood warm her frostbitten skin.

 

* * *

 

“Rain or snow?” Sybil asked, tracing patterns in the sand with her fingertips: flowers and hearts and hatch marks. It was a beautiful day here no matter what the answer was. It was _always_ a beautiful day here, with the sea breeze and the green overhead giving way to sunbeams. She was warm and dry, yet when she closed her eyes she could only see the city, bleak and overcast, glowing and neon and bright.

When she lounged back on her quiet beach, she thought of endless skies and almost endless towers, the theatre and the stage, and the way it all fell away when Red took her place at the centre — how the sky bowed down and the towers leaned in to listen when she sang her song. The sun was here, but the brightest star was out _there_ , filling every corner but hers with radiant light.

“I voted for rain,” Asher said, then paused for a beat. “But I think snow.”

“Well, at least _you_ have good taste.”

She fluttered her lashes and looked up at the stripes of her parasol. Sunshine and rain were just two sides of the same coin, and an umbrella was an umbrella by any other name. She could bear a cloudy day if it meant a starry night. She could weather a minor storm.

Anything but _snow_.

“What brought this on?”

He set his journal aside and tugged his scarf loose, frowning to himself — regretting his fashion choices, Sybil hypothesised. Why he would choose to wear such a thing _here_ was beyond her (though perhaps she was not one to talk, she thought, recalling the previous day’s frostbite).

“If it rained right now I feel as though something beautiful might fall into place,” she explained airily, removing her hat and hugging it to her chest as she lay down flat.

“Why _rain_?”

“A change of pace always bodes well.” She shrugged.

“Such insubstantial things only distract us from what _really_ needs to be changed. When everything —”

“Yes, yes, I know,” she interrupted. “But I’m not talking about anything quite so _substantial_ this time, darling.”

“Still, it’s worth keeping in mind,” he said, flicking a grain of sand off his shirt. “In all things, substantial or not, we tend to look for the easiest answers to our problems — to make the changes that require the least of us — when it’s often the case that what we really _need…_ ” He frowned. “Cannot be reached without greater measures. Unless the beautiful thing you're waiting for is complaints about the drainage system, I’m sensing that rain might not be the catalyst.”

Sybil looked at him for a long moment, then let out a wistful sigh.

“Now, why don’t they have you in charge of the _advice column_ , Mr. Kendrell?” she said, ribbing him. Satisfied with this response, he reclined beneath the shade.

“What was the weather like,” she asked once he had settled. “When you met Grant?”

He lapsed into silence. When she turned her head she found him squinting up at nothing in particular.

“The sky was clear, cloudless,” he answered languidly, tapping his pen against the bridge of his nose. On his third tap, he added brusquely, “Purple.”

“How romantic,” Sybil said sincerely, and smiled to spur him on.

“I remember I told him, right before we parted that first time,” — he smiled, too, but more to himself — “I _loathe_ purple.”

“ _How romantic_.” She continued smiling, now dryly.

“And he said —”

“Asher?”

“No, no, we weren’t on a first name basis yet.” He waved his hand dismissively.

She shook her head, sitting up and crumpling her hat in her lap.

“What would you have told him if the sky was blue?” She furrowed her brow. “Or if it was raining? If it was snowing?”

“Does it matter?”

“That’s what I want to know.” She heaved her shoulders in a sigh. “Does it _matter_? Would you have told him anything at all? Would the rest of it have been the same if you  _hadn't_ , or would it have just ended there, with that interview? Did you meet him because it all fell into place or did it all fall into place because you met him?” Her lips pursed. “And if it rained right now…”

“Listen, Sybil, the sky _wasn’t_ blue. It wasn’t raining. It wasn’t snowing.” He propped himself up on his elbows, laying his head against his shoulder. “The sky was clear and purple, and I loathed it, and I told him as much, and I did not loathe him the same. Those are facts. As you know, we don’t have the luxury of many of those.” His smile grew bitter. “There’s so much uncertainty in this world, so much we _should_ be questioning. Why question what we already know? Why play with what-ifs? All we can do is work off of what we have.”

Sybil drew in a long breath and pulled her hat back onto her head, bottled frustration in the twitch of her knuckles. She wanted to say that what she had did not suit her, that what she had was not enough, that what she had was nothing at all compared to what she knew she _could_. Instead she said nothing.

“If it rains then it rains,” he concluded. “And if the beautiful thing you’re waiting for can’t find a way to flourish in snow then maybe it wasn’t meant to flourish at all.”

It was a dissatisfying answer. She closed her eyes to the sunlight and imagined brick and stone and spotlight, and a rainy day where she could offer an umbrella to shield _her_ from the rain the way _he_ offered his coat in the snow.

“Do you think it rains in the country?” came Asher’s voice, idle now, giving her a start.

She took a second to consider.

“With grass that green? Oh, it _must_.”

“And I suppose whenever it doesn’t rain it must be clear blue skies.”

“It’s always the weather we want,” she said, mournfully, “wherever we aren’t.”


End file.
